Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
When I first saw that a song attributed to a “Dennis Lloyd” was trending on Spotify, I wondered why said Dennis hadn’t gone for a stage name, and felt sorry for him that he was now becoming successful and would be stuck with Dennis from now on. Therefore, I was surprised to discover that Dennis Lloyd actually is a stage name – that of Nir Tibor, a singer/producer from Tel Aviv, who chose it because he wanted people to think they’d heard of him before. That wasn’t his only smart move. After hearing of other musicians gaining international success thanks to dance remixes, he decided rather than wait for someone to turn one of his singer-songwriter-style songs into a club-friendly hit, he’d do it himself. The result sounded like the stereotypical Euro hit of the 2010s. It took off on Spotify, and he was soon inundated with label offers. Just over a year later, the upbeat version of his single Nevermind is rising up the charts across Europe, the UK and US.